Due Comfort
by everworld2662
Summary: That little git,' he said calmly. 'He wasn't so cocky last night when the Dementors were down our end of the train. Came running into our compartment, didn't he Fred' Very mild [slash]. [FredGeorgeDraco]


Due Comfort

A/N: I don't know why I wanted to write this scene. I was re-reading POA and I just stopped on the quote below. It seemed important to me, somehow. Mild slash. Mainly Fred/Draco, with some odd insinuation of Draco somewhere into it.

A/N 2: I can also see that the worst that happened to Draco would be considerably bad. Kindly keep this in mind so that my Draco isn't OOC. (We're going down the abused!Draco! path here, in case the 'Please stop' wasn't obvious enough.)

Warnings: Minute slash. Extremely mild hints of Fred/George (incest).

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_'That little git,' he said calmly. 'He wasn't so cocky last night when the Dementors were down our end of the train. Came running into our compartment, didn't he Fred?'_

_'Nearly wet himself,' said Fred, with a contemptuous glance at Malfoy._

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

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_

Fred smirked at his brother as he put his feet up on the compartment seat opposite.

"Reckon we should go get Lee now? That is - if he's finished doing whatever he was doing with Alicia Spinnet when we walked in -"

George, sitting diagonal to him, snorted appreciatively and opened his mouth to speak. At that exact moment, the lights in the carriage went out. Fred swore into the silence.

"What the hell?" George babbled aloud in response. The darkness was perplexing enough, but the rocking motion of the train was slowing too; for some reason, they were coming to a halt. The journey had barely last two hours so far. So then why...? George opened his mouth to voice the thought and was distracted by the sound of something breaking. Fred swore again.

Across from him, Fred was patting the ground, trying to identify what he had broken. A moment later he gave up, groping instead for his trunk. His fingers had just closed around the handle when a creak startled him. He sat up rigidly.

"George!" he said abruptly, causing his twin to knock his head sharply with a yelp of pain. "What was that?"

"How the bloody hell should I know?" George responded sharply. There was more than a hint of fear in his voice.

"_Weasley_!" a voice hissed out of the dark, as if in response. It was low and frightened. "Weasley!"

"_Malfoy_?" Fred exclaimed. Was this a stunt of Malfoy's, then? He considered it briefly before realizing, belatedly, that Draco's dedication could not possibly extend to stopping the train.

"Stupid git!" George's disembodied voice declared, with what sounded like deepening disgust. All the traces of fear were gone. "What are _you _doing here?"

"I…"

With a triumphant click, Fred snapped open his trunk and seized his wand. He jumped to his feet, hissed "Lumos!", and brandished it in the direction of Draco's voice. In the wintry light, Malfoy, who was standing by the doorway, looked pale and frightened. He flinched slightly away from the glare and the wand aimed at his face.

"Look - there's something...out there…" Draco gestured the doorway and stepped aside, looking slightly less scared and increasingly sulky. Fred moved forwards, glaring for a moment at Malfoy, towards the glazed compartment door. He pressed first his hand against the frosted pane, then his freckly nose, squinting to see through the slightly opaque surface.

Behind him, George was still staring in disgust at Malfoy, who was busy critically examining the state of the tatty robes George wore. The blonde smirked, but he said nothing, his eyes moving next to look around the entire compartment. The floor was strewn with items: sweet wrappers, various unidentifiable tricks and toys, numerous fake wands, pieces of parchement, quills leaking black ink and - scattered articles of Muggle clothing. Draco raised an eyebrow at the latter, going slightly pink, and George snarled, tossing a pair of Fred's socks in his face.

At that moment, Fred jerked away from the compartement door with an indistinguishable cry. He stumbled backwards, bumping into Draco and sending them both sprawling.

"George," he gasped from his position on the floor, twisting around to meet his twin's eyes. Still standing, George met Fred's gaze and glanced nervously towards the door. As he did so, a dark shape suddenly moved behind it. A cold wind swept throught the carriage unbidden in one fierce gust of air, and the shadow remained, unmoving, in front of the compartment. The light from Fred's wand flickered once and died.

George, scarcely able to move with fear, dropped into the compartment seat. His knuckles were white as he gripped the edges of the plush material, shuddering slightly. He glanced down: Fred, on the floor, was not faring any better. His twin had gone rigid, eyes wide and horrified, and George longed to catch his hand but was frozen in his seat.

Fred, unlike George, did not had the comfort of at least being upright. His sprawed position was uncomfortable and left him feel extremely exposed, should that compartement door slam open, as he feared it would. Barely breathing, he turned his head to see Draco and what he saw shocked him temporarily out of his fear.

Draco was crying. He had curled up into a ball, a skinny arm clutched around his stomach, and his pale face was crumpled in utter misery. The Slytherin let out a soft, keening wail and Fred's misery was abruptly amplified tenfold. A terrible emotion was welling up in his chest, far, far worse than simple sadness, and Fred could feel his throat burning in response. But another emotion had suddenly decided to trump it - sympathy.

Crawling across the floor, bumpy with discarded items, seemed to take forever. Once he had got there, Fred saw Draco's eyes slide down to stare at him. It was the smallest of movements, but Fred could guess the effort behind it: Draco was shaking, gasping slightly with every breath, though his sobs had subsided. It seemed the blonde's misery surpassed mere tears. The thought prompted Fred to read out and touch his hand. His fingers were wet against Draco's and Fred glanced down, faintly surprised to to feel a drop of moisture run its way down his chin, and find that he had given way to the burning in his throat.

_How much longer? _Fred found himself wondering, desperately. _What is _happening?

"Please stop," Draco whispered suddenly, echoing his thoughts, and Fred could not bear it. He darted forward and brushed his lips against the other boy's cheek, squeezing the hand he held tighter. Then something shifted behind Draco's eyes and the Slytherin repeated, unconvincing but firm, "Please - please stop."

Fred did stop. He let go of Draco's hand and let go of his sympathy. Misery rushed in to replace it, and Fred had no place for shame as tightness curled in his throat again. He aimed for George instead, dragging himself to where George's legs dangled, unnaturally stiff, over the compartment seat.

"You alright?" Fred asked, in a quiet, hoarse voice that sounded nothing like his own. George opened his eyes and shook his head, quickly. Fred slipped a hand around George's ankle, comfortingly.

They stayed like that, immobile, until the sweeping cold ebbed gradually away. Fred had not removed his eyes from George's the entire time: he had not noticed the shadow finally move past the compartment, hadn't witnessed Draco cover his mouth with his hand, head bowed, as if he feared he might speak something else aloud. By the time Fred did gather the courage to raise his head, the Slytherin was on his feet, facing the wall. The grip around George's ankle tightened slightly.

"You might know our secret, but now I know yours," Fred reminded suddenly, boldly.

Draco didn't respond for a moment. Then he turned around to meet Fred's eyes and nodded once, curtly, before leaving the compartment without a word.

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Edited/rewritten on 28/11/07. Minor layout changes. Edited my own A/Ns to make them marginally less obnoxious. Referenced the quote (poorly). Edited the narrative and dialogue quite heavily. And, hopefully, fixed the POV problems. I like this version a lot better, even though it's still a little rough. A lot of the things I insinuated obliquely in the first one seem a lot more obvious, in a (hopefully) good way. But you tell me.


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